Episode 194: FOSSY 2023 With Timmy Barnett & Devin Ulibarri  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sustain]] - Full Title: Episode 194: FOSSY 2023 With Timmy Barnett & Devin Ulibarri - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/fde71808-e4c3-4dfc-9631-7310ee3a980b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Music Blocks Combines Music and Code** - Music Blocks blends musical creativity with computational thinking in one visual programming language. - It allows exploration of musical concepts alongside coding, revealing the deep overlap between both fields. Transcript: Speaker 1 So music blocks is a visual programming language for music. And we've been working on it for like 10 years or so. So mainly, it's been a collaboration between various members of the Sugar Labs community. Sugar Labs is now a nonprofit. And it focuses on free software learning activities and programs mainly for kids and for teachers to use in classrooms. And so music blocks is a visual programming language. So it combines music and computation. So they can explore musical concepts as well as computational concepts. And it's amazing how much overlap there is between those two subjects. So how did that get started? It got started mainly because I went to a talk that Walter Bender was giving. Walter Bender is a co-founder for Sugar Labs. So I was interested in his work because I became interested in free software in education specifically. And I attended his talk because he was talking about Sugar Labs, which basically empowers kids with free software so that they're not just like users, but they can potentially be contributors. And I kind of came up with a theory that if you gave kids these four freedoms to study the software, to use the software, to modify the source code and redistribute either verbatim copies Or modified versions of the software that they could really learn a lot. Whereas in a classroom where they can't do those sorts of things, they can't really learn how the software they use on a daily basis works. You know, I went to his talk and then afterwards, I sent him an email and unbeknownst to me, he was interested in collaborating with a musician to create what is now music blocks. I mean, at the time, I didn't realize what we were getting ourselves into. So just over the years from that point, we've been collaborating. And there's been more than ([Time 0:01:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fccbde5a-47cd-4556-883d-286b11badc58)) - **Japan's National Curriculum Adoption** - Japan adopted Music Blocks into their national elementary school programming curriculum through significant grants. - Collaborations with Japanese publishers helped create localized curriculum materials, expanding reach internationally. Transcript: Speaker 1 Teachers to use in classrooms. And so music blocks is a visual programming language. So it combines music and computation. So they can explore musical concepts as well as computational concepts. And it's amazing how much overlap there is between those two subjects. So how did that get started? It got started mainly because I went to a talk that Walter Bender was giving. Walter Bender is a co-founder for Sugar Labs. So I was interested in his work because I became interested in free software in education specifically. And I attended his talk because he was talking about Sugar Labs, which basically empowers kids with free software so that they're not just like users, but they can potentially be contributors. And I kind of came up with a theory that if you gave kids these four freedoms to study the software, to use the software, to modify the source code and redistribute either verbatim copies Or modified versions of the software that they could really learn a lot. Whereas in a classroom where they can't do those sorts of things, they can't really learn how the software they use on a daily basis works. You know, I went to his talk and then afterwards, I sent him an email and unbeknownst to me, he was interested in collaborating with a musician to create what is now music blocks. I mean, at the time, I didn't realize what we were getting ourselves into. So just over the years from that point, we've been collaborating. And there's been more than 150 contributors to the project so far. Cool. Also, we got pretty significant grant in Japan, and they're interested in using it in their public schools system because they have a mandate that in all of the elementary schools, Nationally, they will learn programming. And so through like two rounds of national funding, we made some improvements, also created some curriculum materials in Japanese in collaboration with Gakken, which is a publishing Company in Japan. ([Time 0:02:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3ff6d354-4b9b-4fb2-95fc-5e99f168b6a2)) - **Customizable Instruments Enhance Creativity** - Users can customize instruments in Music Blocks by recording sounds and tuning them, enhancing creative freedom. - This flexibility supports diverse musical expression beyond traditional instruments within coding projects. Transcript: Speaker 1 You can certainly do that. So like you can set the instrument, anything you like, you can even like record a sample of a sound. And then that can be your instrument. So like if you have like your guitar or your Xiaomi Zen or whatever, you could record like one note and you could say, well, that note is tuned to this pitch. And then it'll change the pitch over whatever pitch you want. ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f10caac0-b764-4d49-ac0f-61f14e221bb4)) - **Sugar OS Boosted Child Literacy** - Devin's son benefited from using Sugar OS early, helping him learn to read with speak activity. - Interactive activities fostered natural literacy development by engaging the child in exploration and creation. Transcript: Speaker 2 Paid work somehow. So how does that work? Like where's the funding going? Speaker 1 I am a musician. That's where I got all my degrees. I got my first day job starting January 11th of last year. I now work at the Free Software Foundation. But I did help incorporate Sugar Labs. Thank you. I worked with a lawyer to and then the rest of the board to get it incorporated. So now it's its own entity, filled out the IRS paperwork. So now it can accept donations. So if you can donate, please do so that we can spread what we do around the world. I love that. Speaker 2 How many people use Sugar Labs at the moment? Speaker 1 It's impossible to really know. Cool. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Because of the nature of Free Software, we could distribute it, but also like other people can distribute it for scale has its own distribution. I don't really have a way of giving you a good number of that. But I have traveled the world and I've seen kids, for example, in Thailand using like XLaptop, one laptop for child laptops and they're running Sugar Operating System. And I think there's not nearly enough people in the US using Sugar Operating System. You know, I have a kid. You just turned 6. P, for example, like in his class, use Sugar Operating System, then what was typically given to kids in classrooms across the US? I don't think you can really learn that much from iOS or Chrome, but Sugar OS is like built for kids to explore and learn from the ground up. I did get an XLaptop. It was like a hand me down from Walter. Unfortunately, they're like not making any new ones, which is really unfortunate. But I had one and I gave it to him like maybe when he was as young as like three or four. And I think it really did help him learn how to read. There was like a period of time where he was walking around, looking at all the words on books around the house and other places and he would type it in to the computer and it would have them Speak it back to him. Yeah. This was like kind of at a critical moment in his life. And after like a couple months, he was like reading significantly better. Cool. Because of that. Yeah. And that's just like one of the activities. That's the speak ([Time 0:05:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/765d4553-eb58-48af-96d0-08d37abb7e15)) - **Build Community to Spread Use** - Music Blocks needs to reach a critical user mass to build a teaching culture and user community. - Create engaging educational videos and resources so kids and teachers can self-learn and spread the tool organically. Transcript: Speaker 2 Blocks, which is you're funded. You talked about that at the beginning. And you have a large user base and some name recognition. What are you working on now? What's difficult? What's next? Speaker 1 I think that as challenging as developing something like this open into tool, like music blocks has been. And then those two rounds of funding, which have ended that did kind of put us forward. But I think what we need to do is reach critical mass of users. Like it needs kind of like a culture. It needs users that can educate other users, like how to make their own programs and stuff. And so right now we're making, for example, some videos with kids with students as kind of like the featured hosts of the videos, like explaining how to use music blocks, how to create Your own projects. So our biggest challenge right now is getting the word out, educating the public how to use this tool. It's a programming language. So in that way, it's like a complex tool. It's for kids, but it's not like a kid language. It doesn't like confine them into, you know, because you're a kid, you can only do these sorts of things. Like it's a full featured programming language. So because of that, it's like, when we're getting the word out, it's like, well, I can do this, but it can also do this. And it can also do this. And it can also do this, this, and this. It's a web app, but it's a web app that within the web app, you can create web apps, for example. And so that lends itself a little less immediately to an elevator pitch. But it's much better for education. Right now it's just like, how do we give teachers the tools they need to bring this to their classroom in the best possible way? How do we provide material so that kids just kind of like traversing the web online can like get what they need so that maybe even if they don't have a teacher, they can get up and running. ([Time 0:08:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ac6b59f-30bb-47ba-a650-a651f09c9376)) - **Revolutionizing Music Education** - Music education is often closed-ended, but Music Blocks encourages composition and creativity from the start. - The tool lowers barriers and offers new ways to teach music concepts like intervals and scales interactively. Transcript: Speaker 2 Technology. And they don't want to anywhere near them. And they'd much rather just be in a circle and play the violin all day, which I think is great. But it sounds like you have the right approach of having an active approach to technology as opposed to a passive approach. Would you consider that accurate? Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. So in some ways, I think of music blocks as like an instrument. Because you can really use it to create things. It's a tool. In terms of musicians as leadites. Yeah, there's sometimes we do have musicians teaching artists, I like to call them, because they're musicians who also teach. And sometimes they are a little bit hesitant to use music blocks. You know, whoa, what's this? Like, I didn't go to school to like use this. So for example, we get students from like Berkeley College of Music and New England Conservatory. And we actually hire them to teach in some classes that we do. And sometimes they're, whoa, you know, what did I get myself into? I hardly do anything on a computer let alone this. But they do bring a lot to this. And I think they bring something that if we just hired someone that was specifically computer science, they wouldn't be able to bring, which is that kind of at the beginning of this podcast, For example, playing music, bringing that kind of like that sound, that feeling that music gives. So a lot of the teaching artists, they'll play some music, they'll teach musical concept first, like intervals or scales or something. And they can teach that on like whatever instrument they're familiar with and demonstrate that and also play like an inspiring piece of music. And then it's like, then we pull out the computers. Now we'll transfer what we just did over to the computers and experiment with that computationally. And then on the other end of that is, I think music education, what music education gets out of what we have is that a lot of times in the classroom, when you're teaching a concept, it's Very closed ended. Yeah. In a like a typical music education ([Time 0:11:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0cc6c9b0-4f68-4233-b176-ea97e381ec89))